-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: With high price of potato continuing to hit consumers hard, the state government has started taking several initiatives to tackle the crisis and increase production. A meeting, chaired by chief secretary G C Pati on Wednesday, chalked out strategies to create a buffer stock of 4 lakh quintal of potato to meet crisis situation. He attributed high price of potato to short supply from West Bengal. Potato is...

-The Hindu Reports that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government intends to radically restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have re-ignited public discussion on the scheme. Since its launch, debate on MGNREGA has been synonymous with ideological contestations on the role of the state and its welfare functions. Inevitably, the contours of the debate have been shrill, leaving little space for an evidence-based discussion on the...

-The Hindu The failure of Narendra Modi's infrastructure plan reflects the larger failure of the Indian imagination, a mindless enumeration of ideas that have little or no bearing on Indian reality. When much of what is built is a half-baked imitation of disparate items tried and tested elsewhere, it becomes hard to fault Mr. Modi. If the recent image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi swinging on the jhula with Chinese President Xi...

Despite high prices of fruits and vegetables, India's area under horticultural crops - mainly fruits, vegetables, spices and flowers - has doubled in around twenty years (between 1991-92 and 2012-13). This has resulted in increase in production of horticultural crops nearly threefold (2.8 times). A new report from the Ministry of Agriculture says that the area under horticultural crops during this period rose from 12.77 million hectares to 23.69 million...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Women seem to be most unsafe in their homes while the conviction rate in crimes against women remains very low, a government study has found. Cruelty by husband and relatives continue to have the highest share (38%) of crimes against women, followed by 'assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty' (23%), kidnapping and abduction (17%) and rape (11%). In a chapter on social obstacles in...